Boxing Hall of Famer and entrepreneur George Foreman passed away at the age of 76. His family is Instagram posts With his account.
“In profound sadness, we announce the death of our beloved George Edward Foreman Sr., who set out for peace on March 21, 2025, surrounded by our loved ones,” the post read.
Heavyweight champion boxer Foreman was “a dev preacher, a devoted husband, a loving father and a proud grandfather,” the family statement said.
“Humanitarian, Olympian and two-time heavyweight champion of the world. He was deeply respected – the power, discipline, conviction and protector of his legacy, and fight for his good name exhausted for his family – for his family.
“We are grateful for the pouring of love and prayer, and we respect the extraordinary lives of those who have been blessed to call ourselves, so please kindly ask for privacy.”
“Big George,” an intimidating, thunderous puncher who lost his first title to Muhammad Ali in the famous rumble in the jungle in 1974, was a more rounded and cheerful figure when he knocked out Michael Mooler for the second crown 20 years later.
Foreman's comeback and the fortune he sold a greasy electric cooking grill made him an icon of self-improvement and success.
Shortly after being born in Marshall, Texas on January 10, 1949, his family moved to Houston, where he and his six brothers were raised by single mothers. Growing up poorly in the isolated American South, Foreman dropped out of middle school and used his size and fist in a street robbery.
Job Corps, part of President Lyndon B. Johnson's reforms to “great society,” “salvation me out of the ditch,” Foreman wrote. Through the program, 16-year-old Foreman was encouraged to move out of Texas and grow into his rage and mass boxing.
In his 25th amateur fight at the age of 19, Foreman won the heavyweight boxing gold medal at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Turning the pro, he won 37 straight matches to face champion Joe Frazier in Kingston, Jamaica, and won the round two with a technical knockout.
Foreman defended his belt twice more before meeting Ali in Kinshasa, Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in one of the most famous boxing matches in history.
Ali was stripped of his crown for refusing to be drafted into the Vietnam War seven years ago, and took part in the match with a heavy underdog with the larger younger champion. However, for the seventh round, Ali was against the ropes and in the eighth round he dodged a blow from Foreman's club, causing him to tire and knock him out.
“I was one strong heavyweight punch fighter,” Foreman told Reuters in 2007. “I was a single punching machine.
The losses were destroyed. He took a year off before returning to the ring, and then, after his second professional loss, he retired in 1977 to become an appointed pastor of the Church of Lord Jesus Christ.
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Ten years later, quite heavy at 315 pounds (143 kg), Foreman staged an unlikely return to the ring to raise money for the youth center he founded in Texas.
He won 24 times in a row, gradually slimming along the way, losing Holyfield to Evander in 1991 in a 12-round decision.
Foreman's final battle was in 1997, ending his career with a professional record of 76 wins and five losses.
Foreman got married four times in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1985 he married Mary Joan Martery for the fifth time, and he remained for the rest of his life. He had five sons – all called George, and had five biological daughters and two adopters.
After retiring from the 1990s, he was a enthusiastic pitchman for a variety of products, especially the electric grills at home appliance maker Salton Inc., and in 1999 the company paid 137.5m to name the grills and other products.
“What I do is fall in love with every product I sell,” Foreman writes in his autobiography, George. “That's what sells. Just like a sermon.”
